26 April 2012: A new report by the Royal Society provides an overview of the impacts of people on the planet’s resources and offers several recommendations, including a call to not consider population and the environment as two separate issues.

The report, titled “People and the Planet,” offers an overview of the impacts of human population and consumption on the planet. It asks questions about how to avoid harmful impacts, with a view to stimulating discussion and action by governments, scientific bodies, NGOs, the media and others. The report highlights that the combination of rising global population and rising material consumption is having unwanted impacts and feedback, such as climate change’s reduction of crop yields and increased rate of species extinction. It further notes that the relationship between population, consumption and the environment are not straightforward, as the natural environment and human socioeconomic systems are complex in their own right.

Key recommendations of the report include: raising the world’s 1.3 billion poorest people out of extreme poverty, through increased per capita consumption for this group and by allowing improved nutrition and healthcare, and reduction in family size in countries with high fertility rates; reducing unsustainable consumption by scaling back or radically transforming damaging material consumption and emissions, and the adoption of sustainable technologies; and slowing and stabilizing global population growth through voluntary family planning, inter alia. [Publication: People and the Planet]